Best Games of a Chess Coach: Masterpiece in the French

In the fifth article, part of the “Inside the Master Mind: The Best Games of a ChessCoach” Series I would like to present you one very good positional win of mine as played in French Defense. When a tournament player has to play a specific famous variation of a given opening system, which contains a great deal of theory, the most important thing they should do is not to try to memorize all the moves and continuations, but to grasp the ideas and plans behind the moves recommended in the theory. Therefore, I believe that this game is one of my best theoretical wins in a specific, widely analyzed and popular variation in the French Defense. This game was played in the second round of the strong Open tournament in Plovdiv (Bulgaria) and my opponent was the very experienced and strong chess master Petar Arnaudov. In this game I played with white pieces and in my preparation for the game I decided to choose 1. e2-e4 as my first move, since in the open and semi-open games arise more sophisticated positions, where the well trained, young players like me have the opportunity to utilize their skills much more effectively than their opponent can benefit from their solid knowledge of chess theory. It was a surprise to me when my opponent played instead of the expected 1… c5 after 1. e4, - 1… e6 – French Defense. At this moment, I had no idea what he had prepared to play against me with black and therefore I decided to opt for an interesting variation, in which the understanding of ideas and composing of the plan were of greater importance than the theory itself.  Here is the game as played in the tournament: